Indian SMEs poorly prepared for disaster

Data loss poses huge risks for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as less than 10% of Indian SMEs are prepared for disasters (business data loss), a survey found, SME Times reports.

Symantec on Thursday announced the India findings of its 2012 SME Disaster Preparedness Survey, gathered from 100 Indian SMEs with less than 249 employees.

The survey uncovered that more than 90% of Indian SMEs are not sufficiently prepared for disasters, even as they grapple with high instances of disasters. The reasons for not having a disaster recovery plan range from lack of resources, budgets and general awareness holding down the adoption of disaster preparedness in Indian SMEs, it said.

According to ARN Net, the survey reveals that Indian SMEs experienced at least one natural disaster in the last 12 months. Power outages (74%) and industrial accidents (72%) are the top disasters cited. Indian SMEs also experienced an average of five instances of operational outage, due to power outages, industrial accidents and IT system failures, lasting an average of 11 hours.

Pointing to the poor levels of disaster preparedness, the survey findings reveal that of the respondents, only 6% of Indian SMEs said they are "extremely prepared" for disaster, 8% replied they "have a disaster recovery plan", and one third of the respondents said they "have an offsite failover".

The reasons for not having a disaster recovery plan range from lack of resources (42%), computer systems not critical to business (37%), budgets (21%) and business priority (16%). Showing complete unawareness for the need of disaster preparedness, a sizeable number of respondents (21%) said it never occurred to them to have a disaster recovery plan.

The survey also found that these business units were seen adopting emerging technologies like virtualisation, cloud and mobility. Fifty-six percent of the respondents were willing to adopt virtualisation to improve disaster preparedness, The Hindu Business Line writes.

While 62% of the respondents were willing to opt for private cloud as a disaster recovery option, 63% favoured public cloud.

Around 55% of the respondents were wiling to opt for mobility as a disaster recovery solution.